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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Crane to follow Rangers' model

Here's an interview with Jim Crane from a Florida newspaper covering the re-opening of Crane's golf club:

I think our goal ... is to build the minor league team first and once we have that loaded up and the players start to develop and come up, we will go ahead and sign some free agents as (Rangers) have to help compliment them. We will emulate (the Rangers) model as we try to improve the Astros.

Also contained in the interview is that Crane is exploring moving Spring Training facilities away from Kissimmee, and sharing facilities with the New York Mets.

The Royals had the best farm system in baseball coming into last season and will likely see a nice run of success around the middle of this decade as a result. You have to build from the farm up unless you have ridiculously deep pockets (Yankees, Red Sox). The Astros don't have that kind of revenue and never will.

Let us turn back the clock to 2005. If we were in the AL West at that time, we don't make the World Series for the first time in the history of the franchise. Hell, we don't even sniff the playoffs... The Astros had a shooting chance in the NL. We are now going to be another also-ran in the AL bottom feeders at best, and a boost to the Rangers win column at worst.

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